The Opelousas courier., 1887-01-08
ABOUT C0LOSSl.
Dimensions of the Great State
ues Of Ancient Times.
Their Size in Comparison with Bartho}dfs
Statue Of Liberty

Colossi, of which the BartholdI
statue is now the most important In tn
world, were more common on the glob
before the birth of Christ than to-day
The ancient and famous MARITIME
countries about the Mediterranean sci
literally teemed with them. The Colos
sus of Rhodes, erected by Chares o
Indus, in honor of the sun, is one OF thu
best known to ancient writer's, and wa
one of the seven wonders of the world
It was of brass, cast in separate pieces,
and was twelve years in process Of cree
ton, being completed $50 B. G. 1t wa
a statue of Apollo, and is ~variously es-
timated to have been ninety feet, ninety
cubits and even 105 cubits i'm height. IT.
weight was 720, 900 pounds. Standing
as it did with a leg extended on each
side of the harbor, vessels Uader full
sail could enter between them. A flight
of winding stairs let to the top. The
cost was 800 talents, or very near,y q
half million of dollars. Sixty years
later it was thrown down by an earth
quake, where it lay until A. d. 653,
when the Saracens, the captors OF
Rhodes, sold it to a merchant,
who transported it to Alex
andria on the back of 900 camels.
Rhodes, which now has a population of
only 10, 900, in the height of its prosper
ity, had over 5000 statutes, of which 100
were %colossi.
The Bartholdi statue is $50 feet high
and weighs 800 tons. The statue is
composed of 214 pieces of bronze.
Bavaria, the great female statue at
Munich, personificating that country,
until the Bartholdi statue was said to be
next in size to the Colossus of Rhodes.
1t is IS feet high, with a pedestal 80
feet, and is cast from the bronze of Turk
ish and Norwegian cannon. The figure
is partially draped, holding a sword.
At its side reposes the Bavarian lion, the
guardian of the kingdom. The figure is
hollow and fitted with stairs. There are
twelve characters in bronze, and the
monument was six years in preparation,
being unveiled August Z, 1850. 1t was
erected by King Louis I. and modelled
by Won Schwantheler, and until u
Goddess of Liberty was erected, was
considered the most remarkable statue
of modern times.
The other remarkable statue of recent
years is that of SIN Carlo Borromeo
at Aroma, near the south end of Lake
Maggiore, in northern Italy. 1t was
erected in 1897 and stands on a hill on a
pedestal - feet high. The statue itself
is 66 feet high. The head, feet and
hands were cast in bronze; the remainder
of the statue was formed by laying sheets
of hammered copper on a pillar Of ma
sorry. Three persons may stand in the
head.
Colossal statues were numerous in
E ;ypt. Legions of them were raised,
mostly of the hardest stone, many from
90 to go feet high. The most celebrated
is the statues OF Memnon, in the plain OF
Thebes, at Koumel- Sultan. The two
statues, one of which is the vocal Mem
non, one of the wonders of the old
world, were originally 60 feet high and
made of a coarse gritstone. Both are
seated on thrones and represent the mon
arch Amenaphis Ill, probably about
1900 B. G. The peculiar characteristic
OF the vocal statue was its giving out at
various times a sharp metallic ring. The
re ason for this sound is variously as
cribed to an %artifice of the priests who
struck the moro stone of which the
statue was made, to the passage of cur
rents of air through the cracks, or the
sudden expansion of aqueous particles
under the SUMS rays. 1t became silent
about 1900 years ago.
In Greece, Phidiasss colossal statue of
Jupiter $40 B. c. was "the wonder of
the worldn at that time. 1t was of gold
and ivory and the masterpiece of the au-
thor. He had previously made a statue
of Minerva, of the same material, 80 feet
high, aud also a famous bronze of Pallas
Athene, at Athens, the plume of whose
helmet and the point of whose spear,
like Liberty's torch, were landmarks for
incoming sailors. Lisippus, in the time
of Alexander the Great, over 800 years
B. c., erected a statue so feet high.
which Fabius, during the second Roman
wal, was anxious to take to Rome. but
was prevented by its weight.
Ancient Rome had a bronze statue of
Augustus in the Forum; one of Nero in
marble fully 100 feet high, from which
the contiguous amphitheatre is believed
to have derived the name of "Colos-
scum, and a bronze statue of Apollo
and one of Jupiter upon the capitol.
made from the armor of the Samnites.
They were colossal in size.-New York
Commercial Adgertiser.
Something NeU.
81 wish ] could say something new
said Dumble the paragrapher. tThe
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